Authoritarianism

Why do authoritarian states create constitutions? Is it enough to simply brush them aside as mere façades or a »constitution without a constitutional culture«? No, it is not, says Günter Frankenberg, and shows in his latest book that, as texts written for a public, they need to be taken seriously as well as criticised.

Participation as complicity, power as private property, and the cult of directness as essential features of authoritarian constitutionalism abet the imaginary community of rulers and the ruled and shape the different variants of authoritarian constitutional practice – from fascism through kleptocracy and patrimonial systems through populism.

»The analysis is comprehensive and cuts deep into critical aspects of both authoritarianism and what is usually cast as its significant other: liberalism. The book contributes to the theoretical, historical, and comparative scholarship on constitutionalism, from a substantive point of view, while also putting diligently into practice the methodological commitments that ought to underlie constitutional research in the age of both the liberal democratic dream and the creeping, increasingly recurrent authoritarian nightmare. Frankenberg has managed to thoughtfully dissect authoritarianism and colour the conventional understanding of constitutionalism with perhaps less comforting and familiar but unquestionably more truthful and fascinating shades. The work is a much-needed testimony to the fact that both the naive faith in the virtues of constitutions and the cynical disregard for their failures are ill-fated scholarly attitudes, unfit for recognizing, studying, and correcting the shortcomings and crises of constitutional modernity.« Giusto Amedeo Boccheni, International Journal of Public Law and Policy

»Why do authoritarian regimes bother with a constitution? This book pursues this seeming paradox with deep theoretical insight and broad empirical reach. The result is an indispensable guide to understanding the emerging varieties of authoritarianism and the magical allure that constitutions offer autocrats and democrats alike. This book also holds a mirror back to liberal constitutional regimes illuminating their colonial, ethnocentric, violent and parochial features to which they may have become ›comfortably numb.‹« Alvaro Santos, Georgetown University Law Center, US

»›The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection.‹ If Irving Yolem is Love’s executioner, Günter Frankenberg is Authoritarianism’s executioner. Rather than romanticizing or despising authoritarian regimes, he deconstructs their authority, technology and power to reveal their deepest pathologies. In departing from the comparative constitutional orthodoxy, obsessed with constitutional backsliding to restore liberal legalism, Frankenberg exposes the existential pain and anxiety of liberals and warns them about their complicity in authoritarianism.« Fernanda G. Nicola, Washington College of Law, American University, US